British Indian Surshti Patel receives Joanna Toole Ghost Gear Solutions Award

• Sattwik
• 17 April, 2021

Follow Us

By: Sattwik Biswal

SCIENTIST Surshti Patel, working with the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), has been awarded the Joanna Toole Ghost Gear Solutions Award 2020.

The funding from the award will go towards her project to assess the feasibility of establishing the first ever ghost net collection and recycling system in River Ganges, India – and to mitigate the impact of discarded fishing gear on threatened wildlife, particularly the Ganges river dolphin.

Ghost net refers to any fishing gear that has been abandoned, lost or otherwise discarded, and is the most harmful form of marine debris to ocean life, and among the most prevalent.

An estimated 640,000 tons of ghost gear is left in our oceans each year – more than one metric ton every minute.

The Joanna Toole Ghost Gear Solutions Award was established in 2019 to honour Global Ghost Gear Initiative (GGGI) co-founder, United Nations worker, and former World Animal Protection campaigner, Joanna Toole, 36, whose life was tragically taken in the Ethiopian airlines crash in March 2019.

The Joanna Toole Annual Ghost Gear Solutions Award is given to the most deserving projects that submitted compelling strategies to tackle abandoned, lost and discarded fishing gear.

“…I am honoured and delighted to receive this award, which is particularly meaningful as a young British Indian woman committed to conservation. Working with our implementation partners The Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and local communities, we really hope to use this opportunity to catalyse meaningful change. Our project came from findings from our work with communities during the National Geographic Sea to Source: Ganges expedition and builds on the existing WII Ganga Rejuvenation Programme…,” she said.

Surshti graduated with a BSc in Geography at the University of Leicester and a MSc in Environmental Sciences from Kings College London before she joined ZSL in 2013, becoming technical specialist in the Marine and Freshwater Conservation team – working across projects in Europe, Africa and South-East Asia.